MLS: Orlando City camp raises important player welfare question

MLS are considering a camp-like structure to complete the 2020 season in Orlando City. The proposal raises an important question about player welfare.

Major League Soccer, like every league in the world, is scrambling to finish their season. Where MLS is different to many throughout the world is time. In Europe, for instance, the current campaigns were close to completion. The Premier League has nine gameweeks remaining for most teams.

MLS, on the other hand, runs a calendar-based schedule. The current season was only two matches when they announced it would be suspended until it is safe and appropriate to return. MLS Cup is not scheduled until the autumn and can be pushed back several months, per commissioner Don Garber. There is a greater margin for error, but that does not mean the season is guaranteed to return.

In fact, given the struggles the U.S. have had in dealing with the coronavirus, it is likely that MLS will have to wait far longer than teams based in other countries that have had more successful responses. That is why the Bundesliga in Germany will return this weekend, for instance.

More from MLS Multiplex

• Javier Milei Elected in Argentina: Potential Impacts on MLS and Signings of Argentine Players
• Orlando City and New York City FC in the Battle for Matías Arezo; Grêmio Enters Negotiations! Who Will Come Out on Top?
• USA, Honduras, Panama, and Canada Close in on a Spot in the 2024 Copa America
• De Gea Turns Down Al-Nassr’s Lucrative Offer: Speculation Points to Possible Reunion with Messi at Inter Miami
• Messi’s Magnetic Impact in the United States

MLS, then, is forced to scramble. And in an attempt to find solutions to resume the season, one idea is to host the entire league at a single campus, namely the ESPN Wide World of Sports in Orlando.

Reporting in The Washington Post, Steven Goff said:

"“MLS has proposed placing all 26 teams in the Orlando area this summer and playing competitive matches without spectators at the Disney sports complex and possibly other locations <…> Teams would practice and play primarily at ESPN Wide World of Sports, which sits on 220 acres as part of Disney’s massive footprint in Central Florida.”"

The idea includes players, coaches, and support staff living in quarantine, likely in one of the hotels and resorts nearby. The season would likely take six months to complete. The players and others involved would not be allowed any contact with the outside world, including with their families, partners, children, friends and parents.

This raises an extremely important question: the welfare of the players. On the one hand, you have employment law. They are contracted to play football, and they are paid extremely handsomely to do it. If these are the rules of the league, they must abide by them as instructed by their agreements with the respective teams.

On the other hand, demanding players not see their families for half a year — and potentially longer — living on the other side of the country — or in a new country altogether for the Canadian-based players — is morally uneasy, to say the least. There is the possibility that MLS plays a tournament-style competition, but this would still see players separated from their families for a two-month period at least once training and preparations are included. It is difficult to see how this idea will be accepted by the MLS Players’ Association.

And yet, this is what players are paid to do. If they are not playing football, clubs are shelling out enormous wages for no return in revenue. Perhaps, then, the middle ground is to provide players with the option to opt-out freely, but that they do not receive pay for the period that they do not play.

Whether there is a right answer is difficult to say. These are uncertain times with very few clear paths to take. Nevertheless, player welfare is a problem that MLS must consider as they look to resume play, and it is an issue that is not easy to solve.